RC Passage 3 Explanation (Comparative)
This is an explanation for passage 3 of LSAT preptest 75, the June 2015 LSAT – the comparative passage. The passages are about ethics. The first passage is about whether it is ethical to lie to a liar. The second passage is about whether one is forced to treat a rational being the way they treat others.
This section has paragraph summaries and an analysis of the passage, links to the explanations for the questions are below.
Paragraph Summaries
Passage A
- St. Augustine said we shouldn’t lie just because someone is a liar.
- But some say that fairness allows us to lie to liars.
- There are two questions: 1. Are we allowed to lie to liars? 2. If so, should we?
- Consider a harmless liar. They have no right to the truth. But we must also consider whether we hurt ourselves if we lie to him.
Passage B
- Kant said that if someone rational acts in a certain way towards others, then that person implies that it’s fine to act that way towards them.
- Some say this means we must treat people how they treat others.
- But actually we are only allowed to treat people the way they treat others. We don’t have to.
Analysis
These ethical passages always take a lot of writing to say very little. My summaries above are pretty much all that’s in the passages.
I don’t really think there’s very much to analyze here. You don’t need to know anything that’s not in the summaries. At most you need to know where information is in order prove or disprove answers.
The one thing that deserves consideration is the idea of a rational being in the second passage. The entire second passage is based upon people acting rationally. If, for some reason, we couldn’t say that someone was a rational being, then the argument doesn’t apply.
Your explanations are always so clear and straight to the point! I am wondering whether you have any suggestions as for how to tackle these kind of abstract, ethical passages? I always found them harder to follow compared to the passages on sciences or humanlities. Any advice would be appreciated!
These ethical passages are usually densely worded so simplifying the ideas would definitely help. If you can translate main ideas into your own vocabulary, that would help the ideas stick in your head (and will reduce the need to reread constantly). Also focusing on identifying main conclusions will help navigate through these difficult passages.
Great explanation! Pointing out the caveat about a rational being in passage 2.
I am getting better at RC because of your explanations.